Thread: What's the history of SR metallurgy over the past 200 years?

It could well be Mike - interesting thought. No doubt inconsistencies were numerous (as they still are today despite all the care and control processes) and I have no doubt that certain 'flaws' in steel begat edges that appealed to a lot of people skin and shave-wise. That and the fact that machine made has usurped hand made, hand-forging has almost virtually disappeared except among small groups, notably enthusiasts, the types of grind once favoured having given way to other hollows, etc, etc, etc all played a part in finding 'niche' products that appealed to many.

If you demeaned the art of the japanese forger/smith and booted all its folk-lore, mysticism and sheer nonsense into touch in such a cavalier fashion then there would be an outcry of anguish here, but try to promote the western culture in the same sort of terms and it gets ripped to shreds and hardly anyone raises a dissenting voice.

The past can speak for itself - household names like Rogers, Wade & Butcher, Taylors, Wilkinson, etc, etc, etc all stand as razor/steel/edged implement makers on their own merits. If they and older counterparts like Cadman, Heiffor, Sheppard, Lund, Osborne, Mappin Bros, etc, produced rotten products then history would have passed them by and we would not be discussing them now.

Regards,
Neil

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

If you demeaned the art of the japanese forger/smith and booted all its folk-lore, mysticism and sheer nonsense into touch in such a cavalier fashion then there would be an outcry of anguish here, but try to promote the western culture in the same sort of terms and it gets ripped to shreds and hardly anyone raises a dissenting voice.

lol so true. It always puts a smile on my face when people talk about tamahagane like it's some kind of magical super steel. In reality its production was born out of a necessity to refine a starting product which would, by and large be considered slag by today's standards If you point this out to any tamahagane worshipers though, you are a heretic. That and the fact the katana itself would be virtually useless on the battle fields of medieval Europe against plate wearing knights !

I believe you'll find precise, repeatable alloy production(s) described here. Great stuff if, not exactly, razors - close enough, though.

Japanese foundry and steel/alloys

Viking sword Ulfberht

Originally Posted by mike1011

I wonder if the "flaws" in the steels produced at the time actually helped when it comes to a shaving edge !

As has been discussed before the sharpest edge does not necessarily mean the best shaving edge. Maybe the imperfections in the steel produced at the time is the reason allot of people like the feel of vintage razors over the feel of new razors......just a thought

I dunno Mike, Huntsman made some very clean stuff considering all the industrial "handicaps" of Old Sheffield compared to the modern day. Most modern smelters could not come close to the purity of his crucible steel in his day. I will also allow that compared to modern alloys, his steels were just about as simple as steels could get.

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

I wouldn't be too sure about that...

As far as I am aware it was a golden era, a time when great strides forward were taken in this field. It would not be untoward to insist that it was a time of scientific revolution

Luminaries like Newton and Lavoisier (the father of modern chemistry) sparked it off and Francis Bacons analytical or empirical method provided a means of meaningful experimentation and comparison. Robert Boyle refined that method (Boyle's Law) and the list of names to which we owe much of our modern existence goes on and on: Tycho Brae, Gallileo, von Loevenhoek, Louis Pasteur, Lord Kelvin, Michael Faraday, Herscell, Priestly,

Most of the above innovators and pioneers represent inter-related fields, metallurgy being just one. To get more specific we must enter the realm of the iron and steel masters, men such as Abraham Darby, Wilkinson of iron coffin fame, Roebuck of the Carron Ironworks, Benjamin Huntsman, Matthew Boulton, David Mushet, Robert Forester Mushet, Henry Bessemer, Samuel Osbourne, etc, etc, etc.

So metallurgical knowledge was almost non existent? In a pigs eye, it was!

Regards,
Neil

Yes and no. They understood carbon and iron. But I am willing to bet that they didn't fully understand the influence of, or knew how to measure percentages of tungsten, manganese, etc, which do play an important role in the alloying properties. A quick google search shows me that alloying only became understood and widespread around the turn of the century, well past the golden age of straight razor manufacturing. So anything made before 1900 (give or take) was made with at best a crude understanding of the theory of metallurgy.

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

It could well be Mike - interesting thought. No doubt inconsistencies were numerous (as they still are today despite all the care and control processes) and I have no doubt that certain 'flaws' in steel begat edges that appealed to a lot of people skin and shave-wise. That and the fact that machine made has usurped hand made, hand-forging has almost virtually disappeared except among small groups, notably enthusiasts, the types of grind once favoured having given way to other hollows, etc, etc, etc all played a part in finding 'niche' products that appealed to many.

If you demeaned the art of the japanese forger/smith and booted all its folk-lore, mysticism and sheer nonsense into touch in such a cavalier fashion then there would be an outcry of anguish here, but try to promote the western culture in the same sort of terms and it gets ripped to shreds and hardly anyone raises a dissenting voice.

The past can speak for itself - household names like Rogers, Wade & Butcher, Taylors, Wilkinson, etc, etc, etc all stand as razor/steel/edged implement makers on their own merits. If they and older counterparts like Cadman, Heiffor, Sheppard, Lund, Osborne, Mappin Bros, etc, produced rotten products then history would have passed them by and we would not be discussing them now.

Regards,
Neil

Not really. At least, you won't hear me cry. Tamahagane is basically crud. It's one of the least efficient ways of making steel. The only reason it was done, is that that was what they had to work with. The real 'magic' of tamahagane is that a smith would be skilled enough to take a bunch of high carbon iron slag, and turn it into a homogenized bar of pure (more or less) steel.

Btw, I don't want demean the quality of the steel of those days. I just wanted to point out that they didn't necessarily understood the theory of what they were doing, or how the alloys worked or the dendritic structures of crucible steel. The guy making the ulfberth swords knew how to make good swords and could repeat the process with a good degree of consistency. But he simply did not have the chemical knowledge or the modern day tools to understand WHY his swords were so good or WHAT caused them to be such.

Originally Posted by Bruno

Btw, I don't want demean the quality of the steel of those days. I just wanted to point out that they didn't necessarily understood the theory of what they were doing, or how the alloys worked or the dendritic structures of crucible steel. The guy making the ulfberth swords knew how to make good swords and could repeat the process with a good degree of consistency. But he simply did not have the chemical knowledge or the modern day tools to understand WHY his swords were so good or WHAT caused them to be such.

Then how did they arrive at the conclusions they did without a basic understanding of metallurgy? You can not tell me that they just happened to stumble on the correct combination of materials AND the use of the crucible not knowing what or why.

Hoo K,
The quality of the basic iron ore used in India, Central; and western Europe and the UK was almost always of a high grade and many other elements were in the basic ore. Knowledge was only needed to extract, by process, the best performance of that ore. The crucible steel of the late 18th century was similar to Wootz and was a great way to mix and controll the amount of carbon in the steel. ( the basis fo hardenable steels)
That meant the India sword smiths and those of Damascus had a leg up on the surrounding areas...until the best ore they used was used up.
The Swedish ore is of the highest quality available even to this day. Both sides of WWII had flights to and from Sweden carrying the ball bearings necessary for the survival of often overstressed equipment. And it was the basis of the knife and razor manufacturing throughout Europe and the UK.
Also the Japanese were happy to etch and stamp their razor with "Swedish Steel."
Your studies may disagree,
~Richard

Originally Posted by guitstik

Then how did they arrive at the conclusions they did without a basic understanding of metallurgy? You can not tell me that they just happened to stumble on the correct combination of materials AND the use of the crucible not knowing what or why.

I think stumble upon is the correct response. I would also like to give human beings credit for being keen observers and very capable of remembering the steps needed to reproduce a process, observe for changes and adapt their processes to improve success. But it all starts with a happy accident, a eureka moment what ever you wish to call it. We can laugh at them today, but yes, they pulled it off.

An earlier comment about why some blades were better does really depend on one critical factor that does not apply today. The smiths then did not have global internet to share knowledge, nor did they have efficiency in logistics for supplies. The local ore source was often the point of legendary blades and the best smiths would be gathered there by what ever warlords ruled at the time. We know this to be the case in the demise of wootz/ukku/bulat, it was highly dependent on a naturally occurring alloy of vanadium. Similarly stories are told of old sources of iron sands in Japan that are no longer mined at the original sites, that produced legendary blades. The Japanese have also been quite happy to use Swedish steel whenever they can, even in preference in some tools.

The Ulfbert blades were likely forged on a base material from Frankish era steel smelts. For the day, the Franks made some of the best cleanest stuff ever seen using ancient techniques. No one can be certain how to reproduce it, and some of us, like Ric, are taking their best educated guesses about how they did it (and Ric's pretty close). I'll readily admit that tamahagane or Viking or Roman steels could be incredibly simple (read unmarketable and boring) compared to modern alloys, but they were good steels not total crap.

In the beginning, they stumbled upon, then consistently replicated and refined. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and KISS" applies.